Florida juice, elements

Occurrence and Distribution. PE was found associated with structural elements of the orange. McDonnell et al. (17) reported no activity in filtered orange juice, but found 58, 44 and 28 PE units per kg wet tissue in flavedo, albedo and cell sacs respectively. Working with four varieties of Florida oranges and Dancy tangerine, Rouse (20) showed that juice sacs had the highest... 

Other mineral elements are present in citrus juices in measurable quantities. McHard et al. (34) reported on the trace element contents of Florida and Brazilian orange juice. They cited concentration ranges for 25 elements. Ting (23) reported that calcium, iron, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, and copper are present in reconstituted FCOJ at levels equivalent to about 1% to 5% of their respective U.S. RDA s. 

There have been only two comprehensive studies made on the elemental content of orange juices produced in the United States. The first of these was reported by Roberts and Gaddum (23) a little over Uo years ago. That study was a spectrographic analysis of the elemental contents of several varieties of Florida oranges and grapefruit which were grown during that period of time. Excerpts from their results are shown in somewhat modified form in Table III. 

Table Element i III. Elemental Seedling Orange Content of Several Blood Orange Varieties of Florida Orange (1937) Valencia Orange Juices (PPM)a Lue Gim Gong Orange Tangerine...

In an attempt to update the earlier studies on orange juice and to try to arrive at some quantitative values for a broad range of elements in Florida and other source juice samples, we undertook the analytical project described in the following discussion. Orange juice sources of primary interest to us were from Florida and Brazil but some values were obtained on juices from other locales, i.e., Mexico and California are included for comparison. 

Table VI. Elements Determined in Florida Orange Juice By Neutron Activation8,5"13...

Table VII. Ranges of Element Contents in Orange Juice Samples From Florida, Brazil, Mexico and Calif.

In general, as noted in the previous discussion on probabilities, trace elemental concentrations in juices of Florida origin were found to be lower than those of non-domestic origin. Therefore, three cases were utilized to test the efficiency of the pattern recognition decision vector. 

McHard et aK (152) using plasma spectroscopy investigated 32 elements in Florida and Brazilian frozen concentrated orange juice samples. Using probability statistics they suggested the relative occurrence of the minor elements Ba, B, Ga, Mn and Rb as ratios to zinc could act as "fingerprint" indicators of the geographic source of a sample. No relationship to adulteration was implied. 

One of the earliest applications of ICP-based techniques in food authenticity was the determination of the trace element composition of orange juice [16]. This work successfully showed that, using ICP-AES, it was possible to distinguish between juice produced in Florida and Brazil, utilising only five of the 32 elements measured. 

J. A. McHard, J. F. Foulk, J. D. Winefordner, A comparison of the trace element content of Florida and Brazil orange juice, J. Agric. Food Chem., 27 (1979), 1326-1328. 

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